Table of Contents

PART ONE: THE MASSES
Mass communication: Lazarsfeld, Adorno, Merton
USA, 1930s and 1940s
Mass culture: Horkheimer, Adorno, Brecht, Benjamin
Germany/USA, 1930s and 1940s
The end of the masses: Merton, Lazarsfeld, Riesman, Katz
USA, 1940s and 1950s
PART TWO: EVERYDAY LIFE
Culture and communication: Leavis, Hoggart, Williams
England, 1930s-1950s
Communication and technology: Innis, McLuhan
Canada, 1950s-1960s
Communication as interaction: Goffman and Garfinkel
USA, 1950s-1970
PART THREE: COMMUNICATIVE RATIONALITY AND IRRATIONALITY
Communication and language: Austin, Grice, Sacks, Levinson
UK/USA, 1950s-1970s
Communication as ideology: Hall
UK, 1960s and 1970s
Communication and publicness: Habermas
Germany (USA/UK), 1950s-1990s
Conclusion

About the Author

Paddy Scannell worked for many years at the University of Westminster (London) where he and his colleagues established, in 1975, the first undergraduate degree program in Media Studies in the UK. He is a founding editor of Media, Culture and Society which began publication in 1979 and is now issued six times yearly. He is the author of A Social History of British Broadcasting, 1922-1939 which he wrote with David Cardiff, editor of Broadcast Talk and author of Radio, Television and Modern Life. He is currently working on a trilogy. The first volume, Media and Communication, was published in June 2007. Professor Scannell is now working on the second volume, Television and the Meaning of ′Live.′ The third volume, Love and Communication, is in preparation. His research interests include broadcasting history and historiography, the analysis of talk, the phenomenology of communication and culture and communication in Africa.

Reviews

Paddy Scannell is one of the early pioneers of media studies in the UK. He brings his vast knowledge and experience to give an account of the development of thinking about the media from the 1930s onwards. His overview of the history of media theory is lucid, engaging and a highly informative and provocative account of how theories and their proponents have been shaped by the social and cultural context of the period in which they live... In a field whose boundaries are porous and where there is no consensus as to the core concepts, theories and thinkers, Scannell brings certainty to his effort to identify key moments in the history of the study of the media and communication.... Essential reading for anyone interested in the historical development of the study of the media in the US and the UK.
*THE (Times Higher Education)*

His account of these major writers and movements is both comprehensive and clearly written, and will be appreciated by students and academics alike… What distinguishes Scannell′s history of these theorists and their influence are his discussions of just how these ideas were generated: the labour and work that was undertaken to create the final product. It is the detail of the historical contexts that makes his writing a refreshing look at the history of media and communication in the twentieth century.
*Media International Australia*

This is an original and lucid account of the emergence of two linked academic fields - media studies or mass communication, and cultural studies. Scannell, a historian of the BBC and a brilliant analyst of both radio and TV, writes knowledgeably and perceptively about intellectual developments on both sides of the Atlantic... It will inform both newcomers to the study of media and communication and experts who inhabit these fields but not their history. It is a good reference and a good read - highly recommended.
*Michael Shudson*

This is an excellent book that provides students with a broad series of summary outlines of key thinkers on media and communication, without conflating the two terms.


*Michael Pickering*

This book invites us to be more generous and imaginative than we have been in how we interpret the story of media research and it leads the way by embodying that spirit. The effects tradition and cultural studies will never look the same again.
*John D Peters*

A great book - exciting, and very clearly written.
*Klaus Schönbach*